A monster dhufish caught in local waters this week has left countless amateur anglers in awe. Brent Hough told the Mandurah Mail he reeled in his whopping weekend catch using a 3-6kg rod purchased from Kmart. “We were in the boat just out from Dawesville on Saturday and caught it at a depth of about 50m,” Brent explained. “I thought it was a shark at the start. “There were quite a few times I thought the line was going to snap off.” A mammoth half-hour battle resulted in the scoreline Brent 1-Dhufish 0. Brent’s mate Kris Jones helped him gaff and pull the massive fish on board the boat. “I can’t tell you exactly what Kris said at the time but let’s just say that, like me, he was pretty excited,” Brent laughed. Once he was over the initial shock, Brent took a breath, weighed his catch and put it on ice. He was excited to discover the dhufish weighed in at 21.15kg. Speaking to the Mandurah Mail on Tuesday, Brent said he and a group of about ten had indeed partaken in a massive dhufish feast fit for a king the previous night. “We battered it and it was beautiful. And there were plenty more fillets left over that we have in the freezer.” Brent’s catch did not quite overtake the record of just under 26kg set in WA in the 1970s, it was most definitely in the upper weight scale. What was particularly remarkable was that this was only the second dhufish Brent had landed. “I only caught my first one two weeks ago,” he said. A picture of Brent’s colossal catch sent in by his niece Macie Puckridge posted on the Mandurah Mail website earlier this week gathered hundreds of comments and likes. So huge was the monster fish, one poster even joked online that it looked “photoshopped”, a rumour those who dined on the dhufish were happy to put to bed. Many commenters were inspired by the catch and signalled plans to hit local waterways soon in the hope of landing their own big one. Meanwhile, Brent looked forward to undertaking many more angling adventures and possibly even hooking himself another monster dhufish in the region. “I’m pretty stoked – some people fish all their lives and never catch anything like this,” he said.